We’ve just wrapped up a recent push to improve the performance of some key areas of FIVE, and you may have noticed that the software has been getting snappier lately. Whether it’s startup time, the time it takes to generate PDF files, or the time navigate your projects, we’ve been hacking away at the seconds. In fact, we’ve spent dozens of hours on these improvements lately.

The Details

Not too long ago, it would take approximately 17 seconds to start FIVE, open the most recent project, and land on the project home page where you could start working. In the latest version of FIVE we’ve trimmed about 11 seconds from this time using some clever tricks and painstaking side-by-side testing.

Now 11 seconds might not seem like much, but even such a small improvement will save our clients thousands of dollars per year. That’s a pretty bold claim, but here’s why we’re confident making it:

Software startup is what we call a “repetitive captive event” – the time it takes is too small to allow you to go off and multitask or do anything productive, but big enough to have a measurable impact in the long term. When we make a 65% improvement on a captive event by saving each user 11 seconds, the benefits become apparent over time.

Seconds Add Up

Suppose the average user starts FIVE once per day, 5 days per week, 48 weeks of the year. This works out to about 45 minutes saved per user per year. If our average user makes $30 per hour that’s a savings of $22.50 per year. Peanuts right? Well for every 100 FIVE users, that adds up to a savings of $2,250.00 per year.

Remember – that’s only one part of FIVE that we’ve improved lately. Every improvement along these lines increases the value of FIVE and gives you a better return on your investment by having a positive effect on your bottom line.

So while you keep putting in the hours seeing your projects through to successful completion, we’ll keep putting in the hours to save you seconds.